Kathleen A. Doty

Kathleen A. Doty is an international lawyer and MA candidate in political science and international affairs at the University of Georgia. She currently serves as the Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law. She holds a BA from Smith College and a JD from the University of California-Davis School of Law.

Education

BA, Smith College, Latin American Studies, Film Studies

JD, University of California-Davis School of Law

More About

Kathleen A. Doty is the director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law, a position she officially assumed on August 1, 2017. She joined the center in 2015 and has served as its director of global practice preparation, with a portfolio including administration of: Global Externships; Global Governance Summer School, a four-decades-old summer study abroad offering; exchanges with law faculties overseas; international advocacy; and other academic and research initiatives.

Doty practiced treaty law in Washington, D.C., as assistant counsel for arms control and international law at the Office of the General Counsel, Strategic Systems Programs, U.S. Department of the Navy. Before that, she was attorney-editor at the D.C.-based American Society of International Law, where her duties included managing the American Journal of International Law and editing publications like ASIL Insights, International Law in Brief, International Legal Materials and the Benchbook on International Law. Her own writings include a note in ILM and a chapter in the Benchbook, as well as a study of transitional justice in Darfur, published in the UC Davis Journal of International Law & Policy, and an analysis of a European Court of Human Rights adoption decision, published in the Tulane Journal of Law & Sexuality.

Doty earned her Juris Doctor and a Public Interest Certificate from the University of California-Davis School of Law in 2008, and then was a judicial clerk on the Hawaiʻi Intermediate Court of Appeals. She returned to California-Davis to serve for two years as the inaugural Fellow of its California International Law Center. During that time, she was principal author of the center’s 2011 report, Towards Peace with Justice in Darfur: A Framework for Accountability, and co-instructor of the law school’s Appellate Advocacy course. Her achievements as a law student included competition in the international rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court and the national rounds of the National Moot Court, winner of the Best Brief Award at the National Moot Court and service as a Moot Court board officer. She is an inductee of the Order of Barristers.

Currently, Doty is the vice chair of the Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict, and she previously chaired the Non-Proliferation, Arms Control, and Disarmament Interest Group of the American Society of International Law. In 2013, she was an NGO observer on behalf of ASIL at the U.N. High Level Meeting of the General Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament, and in 2012 and 2017, on behalf of the National Institute of Military Justice, she observed Guantánamo military commissions proceedings in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Her observations were published online at Jurist and at IntLawGrrls.

She received her undergraduate degree from Smith College with a major in Latin American Studies and a minor in Film Studies, and she worked for Engel Entertainment as a production assistant and sound recordist for documentaries before pursuing her career in international law. Fluent in Spanish and proficient in French, Doty has worked with community organizations in the Hispanic and French Caribbean and studied abroad at La Universidad de la Habana in Cuba.

Research Interests

Doty’s research interests include the intersections of international law, national security, human rights, and foreign policy.